Tag Archives: penmanship

Recall how I said that I would just be going through all the hands in my calligraphy book? Well, it turns out that I never opened it after writing the first post. I dug it out of my closet. I dug out my sketch pad that I had been using to practice my calligraphy. I even dug out my calligraphy pens. But that was the end of it. They just sat on my desk for months. At first, I was just too busy during the beginning to really put much effort into practicing all the different hands. Then as time went on, I had some serious motivation issues and then finally I was just lazy. I still continued to whine about my handwriting though.

But recently, I saw that there was a sale on Improve Your Handwriting and I decided to purchase it. The book is considerably smaller than my calligraphy book and I don’t have to carry my oversized sketch pad and special pens along with me either. I just stuff some note cards into the book (I have SO MANY) and I can do some exercises here and there when I need to take a break from the task at hand.

And so, here you are! Some scans of my exercises. I’ve only through the first six chapters of the book. The beginning chapters introduce you to various problems that you might have with your handwriting and help you to diagnose what needs to be improved. You start some exercises in chapter 6 of the book.

These were relaxation exercises from the beginning of the book. I figured I might try them with my right and left hand. I like writing with my left hand now and then, but normally I write mirror image (since I think English is a right handed language and does not suit a left handed writing position). I believe Da Vinci used to do that as well.

Here are the first exercises that are supposed to help improve basic writing strokes. They were supposed to be pretty straight and even. Um…they look fairly decent.

Here are more exercises to help improve basic writing strokes. It seemed like making a lot of u’s and m’s to me. They were supposed to be straight and even. Um…yeah, not so much. Both these and the previous exercises were done with my right hand only.

Oh, and something else I’ve learned along the way is that I may not be able to use a fine point pen when writing in cursive. My cursive would probably improve if I used a medium point pen. That’s actually something I already suspected and it’s kind of nice to have some confirmation, I guess. I’m also not entirely sure if I’ll continue to cultivate my cursive hand. I may just switch to italics. We’ll see.

Remember how I said last week that there’s been a slew of weddings amongst my friends? Well, you get to see two more wedding cards this week because of it.

Here are the cards I made for friends who had their wedding last week and a couple who are having their wedding tomorrow (shh, I’m reasonably assured that they won’t look here before they actually get married, so it’s safe to show it here). I was going to make one of the excessively heart-y cards again from last week, but I keep messing up the first time and I was getting tired of that. So, two cards of filigree hearts it is! The template can be found here from Creadeus (ooh, international). I think I have decided this will be my go-to wedding card of choice, not that it’s any less excessively heart-y. I just really liked how they turned out.

Note: I previously also saw these cards made on Extreme Cards and Papercrafting and I decided not to go with her idea of the bigger base. I think having all the empty space around the cutout is distracting. Ok, end of thought.

In making these, I again turned to my nice garnet colored cardstock as the base. I rather like garnet. For the filigree, I printed the template mirror image on the back of some wedding related paper I got from Michael’s and proceeded to cut everything out with my trusty Xacto knife. My blade is getting a bit dull.

Now then, why mirror image? Because the template includes the word “LOVE” at the top and I when I printed out the template, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use it. I wasn’t too thrilled with the font. It’s a plain sans serif font and I thought it was too big a contrast with the intricate cutout right below it. Thus, I didn’t cut that part out and I didn’t really need to print the template out mirror image. Oh well. Other than that, I decided to use a more playful sans serif cutout to spell “heart” at the top because I thought the card needed a little bit of ridiculousness to remind them who it was from.

The fronts of the cards were different. I think I actually like both equally. I like the simplicity of the bells and hearts from the first card but I also like how you can see more of the words from the themed paper in the second. I don’t know. It’s a toss up.

The envelope was vellum with their names handwritten with French Script MT as a guide for the first card and Liffey Script SF as a guide for the second card. Also a toss up as to which font I prefer.

(Obviously, I need to give some thought to lighting and sizing next time.)